What are the advantages of biportal endoscopy for me as a patient ?

Giulia Bonetti was totally within her rights to actively search a surgeon with the necessary biportal endoscopy experience.

Giulia had been living with pain from her L4/L5 spinal stenosis because she had a tremendous fear of surgery. Research had led her to the relatively new technique of biportal endoscopy. Her dentist son had helped translate the clinical studies into something understandable, and clearly biportal endoscopy was receiving rave reviews in terms of surgeon performance and critically in terms of patient satisfaction and return to work timeframes – now it was about finding a surgeon with the right experience that she could trust.

Ivana Benickova’s surgeon was planning an endoscopic spine surgery, but she lacked the understanding to tell the difference between mono- and biportal- surgery

Upon questioning Ivana found out that her surgeon had performed 35 mono-portal endoscopic procedures. While her research also uncovered the longer learning curve for surgeons applying the mono-portal technique she lacked medical knowledge to fully understand what that meant. By chance, her friend Giulia had undergone a similar operation and could explain to her in simple terms the differences between the two techniques. Ivana asked her surgeon to recommend his colleague who had equal experience (31) but with biportal endoscopy procedures.

Klaus Hügli had a small window of opportunity in his busy work schedule to contemplate his long-awaited spine surgery. His problem was the options under consideration both had relatively long recovery times.

Klaus was pleased with a new option of a Lateral MIS procedure over an Open TLIF, because he was really concerned about reported pain, and time off work from the latter. However, Klaus remained unaware of the choice of an endoscopic procedure for his ailment, because his surgeon had never wanted to take the time to be retrained to perform endoscopy. While patient outcome and satisfaction data looked superior, the surgeon was happy with his older methods, even when the studies showed endoscopy was a viable option for this case.

Mehmet Deniz seemed to lack interest in his proposed surgery and the possible outcomes – why?

Mehmet was not the type of person to question his physician. His six years of back and leg pain would be handled by his surgeon. However, his mind changed following reading an article on back pain in his Turkish newspaper. Biportal endoscopic spine surgery seemed to be increasingly popular in Turkey, but he had never heard of it. Furthermore, there were a host of patient benefits associated with endoscopy that clearly would make a difference to him coaching his football team. Mehmet took responsibility for his treatment, and underwent biportal endoscopy. He was back light training within one month of the operation, and fully took back control of his team by the end of the quarter!